She Gave Me a Lotus
by Lomesir
Summary: In the chaos of the postNew Moon world, Edward and his family are still hunting Victoria. Bella fears for his life, but Edward ignores her warnings. How can Bella tell him how she feels if he won’t listen?


_Author's Note: I wrote this piece for the LJ Community twilightswap. I was given vague directions for writing (fluff, allusion to Romeo and Juliet, etc.) and allowed a month to develop it. That being said, I'm not sure if I'm proud of this piece or not. All of my other stories are children of inspiration. This was forced from my brain with a cattle prod and a helluva lot of elbow grease. BUT there is something good to be found: even though there are angsty undertones, "She Gave Me a Lotus" is primarily a fluff fic. It turns out I can write something that isn't mostly angst or irony or something. So, I will tell you all now that Emmett II in Musings is going to be humor!_

_...probably with some angst thrown in._

**She Gave Me a Lotus**

None of us believed for a minute that this was "just a hunting trip," even though that's what I had told Bella. Oh, Emmett, Jasper, Carlisle, and I were hunting, to be sure. But our minds had wandered from deer and elk long ago.

I crouched low and breathed in deeply. Emmett did the same. Two miles away, Jasper and Carlisle were blazing their own path through the woods, tracking Victoria in the bowels of the park

_This is an old trail. We've missed her. Damn it!_

Emmett's thoughts echoed around my head, mocking me with their annoying truth. We had been following Victoria's old trails all around the Olympic Peninsula for many weeks. And that was the weird part; Victoria's trails were hardly ever fresh. She was wicked clever and just as fast, but you'd think that with seven vampires and almost as many werewolves trawling the peninsula, she'd be dead by now.

But no, here we were, soaked to the bone and angry, ready for the kill but with nothing to kill.

I breathed in again, willing the universe to join my side and bring Victoria to me. Give me her scent, I silently pleaded.

It worked. Carlisle's thoughts swirled into my own suddenly, faint from the distance. _We have a fresh trail._

"They've got something!" I said to Emmett, already running. Emmett and I were at Carlisle and Jasper's sides in less than a minute. Carlisle was drawing in the dirt with his finger, scratching out a crude map of the peninsula.

"Victoria's trail starts here," he said, pointing to the center of the peninsula where the park and the four of us were. "Forks is here, and La Push here." He drew another line from our position to the edge of the map, which represented the Pacific coast. "The wolves patrol these areas here and here," he said, indicating the reservation and outlying areas. "Victoria has been avoiding the places marked with Xs, so she must know we're tracking her, because those spots are easiest for us to track in." Carlisle stood up and ran a hand through his hair. "Judging from the map, and the age and direction of the trail–"

Emmett finished for him. "She'll be in the water by now." He swore under his breath.

I kept my growl from getting any louder than a quiet rumble in my chest, but Jasper sent out waves of serenity anyway. "Keep your head," he murmured.

Oh, sure, _he_ could talk about being calm. _His_ soulmate was immortal. The love of _my_ life, Bella? Not quite. _Not yet_, I though bitterly. Jasper felt my anger and sighed. Carlisle cleared his throat and rubbed out the map with his foot. "Following Victoria will bring us too close to La Push. And anyway, we need to go home."

I nodded, though I was still annoyed at Jasper. I knew the irratation was just a way to vent my frustration, but it clung to my mind. I had to bury my anger before I reached home, where Bella was spending the day with Alice, Rosalie, and Esme.

As the four of us ran back, their thoughts swam in my mind.

_I wonder what Esme's done while we were away._

_Alice had something planned. She asked about mauve before we left…_

_I'm so glad Rosie is talking to Bella now. She just needed time._

I smiled a little as I heard the last thought. Rosalie had indeed been markedly kinder to Bella since the Volterra fiasco. It was a relief that Bella didn't automatically tense up whenever Rosalie was in the same room with her. Things were more pleasant overall between my sister and I now that she had stopped spewing sulfurous epithets at me about Bella whenever we argued, even when the argument had nothing to do with Bella.

The bright lights of our house came into sight and I heard Alice squeal, "The guys are home!" Jasper chuckled and slowed to a walk on the porch steps. Esme opened the door and smiled, shaking her head.

_They're filthy. I just cleaned._

I looked at our clothes and realized we were all covered head to toe in mud, blood, and various green plant stains. Esme chuckled. "Welcome home, you four." She pointed towards the shed. "The hose is over there." Then she shut the door.

Roaring with laughter, Emmett and Jasper ran over to the hose, stripping off their shirts and spraying each other. As I waited for them to finish (rolling my eyes occasionally), a beautifully familiar voice met my ears.

"Edward."

I jerked my head toward the large windows at the back of the house. Bella stood in the warm glow of the interior lights, waving to me, a flower clutched in her hand. She smiled sweetly and beckoned for me to come inside. An order completely impossible for me to ignore. I elbowed my way to the hose and sprayed down at record speed. I was on the porch before the hose could fall to the ground. Bella opened the door and grinned.

"You're back, finally!"

I gathered her in a hug and she kissed my cheek. She pulled away after a minute and handed me a shirt. "From Alice. She says she never wants to see the shirt you were wearing today ever again."

We went inside and sat on one of the loveseats that made up the powwow circle by the television. I kissed the top of Bella's head. "So, what did you do today?"

To my surprise, Bella giggled. "Alice said you guys would be out for a while, so we girls went to Port Angeles to help Esme pick out flowers for bouquets around the house." She handed me the flower she had been holding. "This made me think of you. It's a lotus."

I studied the lotus for a moment. It was a delicate yellow and white, and the petals were splayed. It was beautiful, of course, but I couldn't imagine why Bella had thought of me when she saw it. She continued, "I know it's a little, um, non-traditional for a girl to give a boy flowers, but…it was nice and Alice and Esme thought it was appropriate, and Rosalie said that you'd…because you grew up during…" She looked at me expectantly.

I had the distinct impression that I wasn't getting something vital, and I was hurting Bella's feelings because of it. Indeed, Bella blushed the deep vermillion of humiliation, and seemed suddenly fascinated by a ball of lint on the arm of the loveseat.

The shrill ring of the telephone broke the awkward silence. I heard Carlisle pick up and answer a floor above us. "Carlisle Cullen speaking." There was a short pause. "Certainly, Charlie."

Carlisle appeared at the bottom of the stairs. "Charlie wants you home now, Bella." Bella nodded and stood. I put my arm around her shoulder and we walked to the front door.

Before she went out, Bella looked over her shoulder. "Bye, everyone!"

Six calls of "Goodbye!" and "See you later, Bella!" floated downstairs. I curled the stem of the lotus so that it fit in my shirt pocket and opened the car door for Bella. We drove in silence. Every few minutes, Bella would steal glances at the lotus, and for the seven-hundred-millionth time, I wished I could hear her thoughts.

xxxXxxx

"That girl is smarter than you give her credit for, you know." Alice leaned against the stair railing and crossed her arms, frowning at me. "She knows what you're doing when you go on these all-day hunts every week."

I shut the front door a little harder than was needed. "I give her plenty of credit. She's brilliant."

Alice's frown deepened. "You need to tell her more. All she does is worry about you these days. And she knows that if she voices those fears, you'll brush her off and tell her that she should be worrying about herself."

"Well, she should only be worrying about herself. We're in no danger."

Alice raised an eyebrow. "And the werewolves? What about them? They're not just puppies, you know." She had me there. The werewolves were a problem. I changed tack.

I sat down on the same loveseat Bella and I had occupied earlier. "I do tell Bella everything." I lowered my gaze. "I just don't think she believes me a lot of the time."

Alice snorted and turned to go upstairs. Midway up the stairwell, she turned. "Bella told me about how she felt whenever you go out to hunt Victoria and don't tell her. I told her to tell you, so she sent you a message." She looked pointedly at my chest. "It was Rosalie's idea. Esme helped pick out the stationary, so to speak."

I looked down and saw the lotus, already slightly wilted. I gently pulled it out of my pocket and looked at it. A message? How could one lotus tell me how she felt? I suddenly recalled Bella's strange behavior when she gave me the blossom. _"I know it's a little, um, non-traditional for a girl to give a boy flowers, but… it was nice and Alice and Esme thought it was appropriate, and Rosalie said that you'd…because you grew up during…"_

The answer hit me like a falling anvil in those old cartoons. It was because I grew up during a time when lovers communicated in all sorts of subversive ways, one of which was flowers. Esme would have known all about that, and Rosalie probably would have had some knowledge of it passed down from her mother. I remembered a time in the forties when Emmett had given Rosalie a bouquet of yellow roses and Rosalie had thrown a fit because yellow roses symbolized a decrease of love, or something.

A minute later I was flipping through a book called "Nature's Mythology" that I had found in Carlisle's library. I searched until I found the section with the list of flower meanings, and skimmed until I found, halfway down the page, the entry for lotus. There, it was written:

_Lotus: Estranged love, separation from a loved one._

Well, this was just perfect. Bella felt so estranged from me that she was resorting to a century-old method of speaking with flowers. I shut the book with a snap and went to my room, thinking of ways to salvage the situation. Before I opened the door I smelled more flowers. _Esme must have put a bouquet in there_, I thought vaguely. I opened the door and saw a long white box on my couch. It looked more like a gift than a maternal display of affection. I put down the book and opened the box.

Inside was the most unusual arrangement of flowers I had ever seen. A single white iris was tucked into a bundle of deep red and variegated tulips, along with red flowers that I thought might be columbines. I had to check the little slip of paper inside the box to learn that the two other types of flowers in the arrangement were agrimonies, which were the sprigs of yellow that accented the red, and wallflowers, which had been carefully wrapped around the stems of the other flowers. I remembered the sorrowful lotus and tried to think of what this might mean.

I carefully lifted the flowers out of their box and saw a small white envelope. When I lifted the flap, I found a piece of white stock paper inside. On it was simply, "XOXO Bella."

This time I would see the deeper meaning. I knew that irises meant a message was being sent, so I opened "Nature's Mythology" again and started looking for the various flower's meanings.

Wallflowers, it turned out, meant "fidelity in adversity." _You're so faithful to me, even in hard times._

Agrimonies expressed gratitude. _Thank you so much for doing this. I'm very grateful._

The red columbine signified that the sender was "anxious and trembling." When I read that, I remembered Alice's accusation that my behavior was causing Bella to worry about my safety. _Every time you leave, I'm afraid for you._

The red tulips were a declaration of love. _I love you. I'll send you a bunch of red tulips because a single one couldn't even begin to tell you how much I love you._

However, when I looked up what a variegated tulip meant, I couldn't hold back my laugh. Variegated tulip: Beautiful eyes.

The tenderness of the message filled me with warmth that I relished. Had I ever told Bella how beautiful her mind–her heart–was? I looked at the flowers again, smiling a little. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the number at the bottom of the little slip of paper that came with the flowers. It had been too long since I had given Bella some flowers.

xxxXxxx

Rosalie and I ran full-stream along the trail Victoria had left behind her. We were hours south of Forks, near Hoquiam. The trail led due south, so at this rate, Victoria would have been somewhere in southern Washington. Rosalie was mulling this over as we ran.

_Where could the hellion be going? Did the dogs scare her off?_

My phone vibrated and I stopped running. It was Jasper.

"What?" I asked tersely.

"We have a fresh trail up here."

That wasn't right. Jasper and Emmett were up by Forks. How could they possibly have a fresh trail? That would mean that Victoria had turned around and retraced her path…

This horror was only highlighted by a new sound: barking. And these weren't sheepdog barks.

"Oh, shit," Rosalie murmured. Victoria must have been followed by the werewolves and turned around and taken the exact same path, but in the other direction. And now the werewolves were following it. Rosalie and I turned and practically flew east, away from Victoria's trail. This woman was clever; we'd have her scent on us–which the werewolves would follow.

The snapping and barking grew louder and Rosalie and I ran faster, finally coming to some unknown river and diving in. The scent would disappear, and we'd be washed somewhere away from werewolves.

We clambered out of the river a few miles downstream. Rosalie wrung out her hair while I did the same to my shirt. She shook her head disdainfully. "Well, didn't she just play us like a fiddle." She muttered something under her breath that was not at all flattering to Victoria's parentage.

I filled Rosalie in on the phone call as we ran towards Forks. New trail, new set of problems. Rosalie pursed her lips. "I suppose you'll be guarding the home front if Victoria is near the town."

"Of course."

We ran the rest of the way in silence.

xxxXxxx

I stopped right inside the tree line in Bella's backyard. Inside the kitchen, I could hear Bella and Esme laughing at something Charlie had said. Esme had elected again to stay behind with Bella, but this time at Bella's house because Charlie hadn't allowed Bella to go over to our house again. Esme and Bella had planned a "Woman of the House" day: cooking, cleaning, and laundry. It didn't sound very modern (and I was sure more than a few of the original women's rights activists rolled over in their graves when Bella suggested it), but Bella and Esme enjoyed each other's company, and right now it sounded like it was a good night to eat dinner at the Swan residence. I heard Charlie talking and listened in.

"This is excellent pasta, Mrs. Cullen," he said affably. "What type is it again?"

"Farfalline," Esme said. "It's Carlisle's favorite." She laughed sweetly. "I think I make it too much at home, but my children love it so much. You should see the way they go through a bowl of it. You'd think they'd never eaten before in their life."

I snorted.

Charlie cleared his throat. "Speaking of whom, Mrs. Cullen–"

"Please, call me Esme."

"Right, erm, Esme. Are you sure your husband would be comfortable with you here?"

Esme spoke soothingly. "It's no problem at all, Charlie. Really, it was half his idea. He wanted me to get to know you more, and Bella said she needed some help with some of the housework." I heard her walk over the sink and clean something. "And Carlisle is out tonight because of a pharmaceutical supply showcasing, so everyone at home is just eating leftovers. It's nice not to have to cook for five ravenous teenagers once in a while."

The dinner dishes were eventually cleared and Charlie retired to the living room to catch a game. Esme wished Bella and Charlie a goodnight and left. I met her by the Mercedes.

"Thanks for doing this, Esme."

Esme kissed my cheek. "It's my pleasure, Edward. Bella and Charlie are wonderful people."

She revved the engine and drove away. I watched the car until it disappeared around the corner, and then I ran swiftly to a spot of ground under Bella's bedroom window. I listened to the sounds coming from her bedroom.

Clicking, typing of keyboard keys. The sound of a mouse selecting something. The rustle of leaves…flowers. Bingo. The package had come the day it was supposed to.

Bella was doing something on her computer. I heard her sigh impatiently and mutter, "Come on, come on…"

Ah, dial-up strikes again.

Normally I would have been through her window by this time, but I wanted Bella to have some privacy when she decoded my message. A few minutes later, the typing started again, this time followed by more rustling of the flowers.

"Cedar leaves," she murmured.

_Because I live for you._

"And coltsfoot."

_Because justice will be done for you._

"And currant blossoms…"

_Because your frown would kill me._

"…Entwined with justicia."

_Because you are the perfection of female loveliness, no matter what you say, Bella. Juliet may have taught the torches to burn bright, but you teach the sun to shine._

I heard Bella opening the little box that I had arranged to be sent with the rest of the bouquet. I imagined her brow furrowing when she whispered, "What the--?"

"'Marjoram blossoms,'" she read aloud off the card in the box.

I grinned. Honestly, the marjoram was the best part. I heard her chair scoot across the wood and quick typing. A few seconds later: "'_Blushes_'?!"

It was time to make my entrance as the loving boyfriend. Smiling, I ran home as fast as possible and got into my car. While I drove to Bella's house, I thought about what we could do that night. Perhaps we'd watch a movie together; she had mentioned wanting to see Mansfield Park. Or maybe we could just talk about our relationship.

The normal way.


End file.
